


Blame it on the Wind

by wildglitterwolf



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Cliff can see through Rick's shit, Drunken Shenanigans, M/M, Rick is such a drunk, Rick really hates McQueen, back massage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildglitterwolf/pseuds/wildglitterwolf
Summary: Rick says the wind knocked over the TV antenna but Cliff thinks otherwise.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Blame it on the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sharky9boy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharky9boy/gifts).



> Thanks for the inspiration after our twitter discussion, Sharky! Hope you like it! :D

“Fat five… fat five…. d-dollar. Dollar? Dollar…”

Rick’s eyes were heavy as a mixture of exhaustion and too many whiskey sours tried to whisk him off to sleep. He was just reciting what he could remember as at this point his tape recording was already a good couple minutes ahead of where he was stuck as the air was filled with moments of awkward silence or him speaking over the recording, clearly way too out of it to continue for the night. 

It’s usually in this state that his mind starts getting the best of him and the self-pity party starts, and after the conversation he had with Mr. Schwarz earlier, things weighed on him heavier than normal. 

_It’s officially, ol’ buddy. I’m a has-been._

“Where did I go wrong? Where did I fucking go wr-wrong?” Rick weeps and sniffles, rubbing his nose on his arm. “H-how am I stuck here while someone like McQueen gets off? What’s he got that I-I-I don’t got?”

“Easy. Everything.”

Rick glanced up on his roof, a blurred figure in the darkness standing tall, almost mocking him. “M-McQueen? Get the fuck off m-my roof!”

“Why? I’ve already taken everything you ever wanted. Might as well take this place as well.”

“The hell you well.”

“Also that pretty boy stuntman of yours…”

Rick seemed to get a second wind blow through him. “You have Bud. Cliff’s mine.”

“Can’t hurt to have two, especially when you get as many film offers as I do.”

That second wind helped Rick propel his chair over to the end of the pool, recklessly tossing his recorder off his lap onto the side of the pool and rolling himself out. He was going to teach this fucking prick a lesson; Steve McQueen wasn’t going to take everything from him.

Rick stumbled to the shed and found the ladder by the outside of it. He struggled trying to haul it over, knocking plants and denting bushes but he couldn’t give a shit at the moment. The only thing he cared about was giving McQueen a clean punch to the face. 

Later on, Rick wouldn’t be able to tell you how the hell he managed to scale that ladder without falling off. All he knew was the possession he felt somehow made him focused enough to make it up without a scratch. He finally got over the top of the ladder, the silent dark figure of McQueen looming.

Rick didn’t give McQueen a chance to speak or even run, neither of which he seemed to make any attempt to do so. Rick’s hands lunged forward grabbing McQueen’s surprisingly cold, thin neck as he felt himself getting jabbed elsewhere by the same feeling on his body. It was like the guy kept stabbing him with a metal rod over and over.

“This is for taking that movie from m-me!” Rick screamed as he violently started shaking McQueen, who was holding his stance very firm until Rick felt him start to loosen, knowing he was ready for the final blow. “And this… th-this is for trying to take Cliff from me!”

There was a loud SNAP as Rick fell backwards from the forceful pull he just gave, landing with his back flat on this roof and McQueen square on top of him, some of those cold pointy jabs landing on his chest and shoulder but he was too exhausted to move.

“Heh. Not a tough guy now, are ya?” Rick whispered with a smirk before finally passing out.

\---

The early morning sky finally got around to rousing Rick’s mind, and the first thing he realized was how incredibly stiff he was. The next thing he noticed was how he was lying down at an angle, as if his bed was tilted up at the foot. Then he felt the light breeze and how chilly it was in his room. Then the feeling of the cold metal. And then…

“Oh. Oh, n-n-nooooo FUCK!” Rick screamed loudly enough for probably the whole neighborhood to hear once he opened his eyes to see his TV antenna had him pinned to the roof. He made an attempt to move but the stiffness was too great and he just rolled back down, his metal captor keeping him in place.

“Rick, you fucking drunk. How the fuck did I get to this state?” Rick racked his mind trying to remember what happened. Then the whole McQueen thing came back, and Rick just started laughing and crying at the same time. “He knew if I took down the antenna, I-I wouldn’t be able to watch my show. So i-i-it’s still hi-his fault! He like astral projected or some shit, th-that’s it! Something like that.”

Then it suddenly hit him: Cliff is going to be here any moment. If Cliff found him like this, he’d never hear the end of it! Just like last night, another second wind came through him since the pain his body felt was clearly insignificant to the humiliation he would feel if Cliff caught him like this. He pushes the antenna off, stumbles a bit to his feet and assess the damage. Yeah, no way he could fix it, especially not before Cliff gets here. He was gonna have to remember to tell Cliff to fix it. Excuse? Uh… the wind. Yeah, blame the fucking wind. That always works. That’s what happened last time Cliff had to fix it.

Rick gently places the antenna near up against the higher portion of the roof, hoping the wind doesn’t accidentally really blow it off so Cliff can’t find it later, and proceeds to find out where he put the ladder. He panicked for a moment, wondering if he somehow scaled up without one or it knocked over, but he found it, and began to take his slow, agonizing, descent as he clinged to it all the way down.

He was nearing the second-to-last rung when Rick heard the familiar sound of a car engine accompanied by a 93 KHJ jingle. Rick panicked and quickly went down the last rungs not realizing he was that close to the ground and hit his foot on the cement harder on the landing than he wanted. He wasn’t sure why but his mind decided the best thing to do was to hide the ladder and toss it around the other side as if he needed to hide crime evidence. By this point he heard Cliff’s arrival being singled out by the sudden silence of the engine and radio being turned off, and he knew he wasn’t going to make it to the bedroom in time. So he thought of the next best thing: get back in the pool chair.

Rick grabbed his trape recorder and launched himself back in right as he could hear the front door open. It was the perfect cover story! Of course he’d be sore if he slept all night in the chair. Plus, it would make him seem like he was very dedicated, practicing his craft all night that he fell asleep. He quickly positioned himself, hand on his stein and eyes closed so he could sell the story. It took a few minutes, obviously assuming Cliff checked the whole house first, before he heard the sliding door open.

“Hey, partner. Slept out here all night?”

Rick let out a fake snore.

Cliff sighed, found the pool net and gently pulled it over Rick’s face. Now normally, this would cause Rick to suddenly come awake, probably curse him out as well, and maybe accidentally fall in. But Rick kept snoring away.

“Huh. Guess you must have had a long night.” Cliff carefully pulls Rick in with the net until he’s able to grab his shoulder and shake him. “I know you ain’t dead, man. Come on, wake up.”

“Hmm what? Oh, hey Cliff? Oh shit, did I sleep out here all night? Well no wonder I feel stiff as fuck. But you know, dedicated to the craft, right?”

Cliff cocks an eyebrow. Again, just like the net, if Rick knew he fell asleep out here his reaction wouldn’t be so casual but with a lot of yelling and cussing. 

“Right. Sure.”

—-

“Oh shit, yeah. Yeah, that’s the spot. Right there.”

They still had about half an hour until Rick’s _F.B.I._ was on, and since the pizza came and got eaten quicker than expected, Cliff offered Rick a back massage. The actor could use one since he had a rough day, and apparently a rough night as well. 

“Man, you really got your back worked up, huh? Guess you should call it in early next time you practice in the pool so you don’t fall asleep there again.”

“Hey, if I-I’m gonna be a great actor, I gotta really dedicate myself.”

“Uh huh…” Cliff said as he kept working him before going back up to his shoulders. “Ya know, it was mighty kind of the wind to not blow the antenna clear off the roof.”

“So it was still on top? That’s good.”

“Yeah. I mean, it was so kind it looked like it almost was considerate enough to pick it up and place it for me to find since I’m still scratching my head and how it could have possibly landed there.”

That did it. Cliff could feel Rick tense up and he couldn’t help but give a smirk Rick couldn’t see.

“Oh yeah? Well i-i-it must of w-wanted you to finish qu-qu-quickly.”

“Mmhmmmm…” Cliff’s calloused hands really started adding more pressure to Rick’s shoulders and Cliff could swear he could hear Rick’s heart rate go up. “And I mean, you were sure lucky to be out there all night and see it fall down or shit, we’d be turning the television on in a few and be missing your show.”

“R-r-right… l-lucky.”

Cliff was trying his darndest not to laugh at how bad of a liar Rick was as he leaned in closer and whispered in his ear. “Very lucky…” And Cliff punctuated with a lick on the back of Rick’s ear.

Rick yelled and flung Cliff off, bolted off the couch to finally face him. “ALRIGHT! SHIT! Fuck, it was me, alright? Happy?? I fucking did it. I pulled the antenna off.”

Cliff fell back on the couch chuckling. “Okay, man. I gotta hear this story. What the hell possessed you to do this.”

Rick took a deep breath, looking at the ceiling as he knows this is gonna be a story Cliff won’t ever let him live down. “I-I was in the pool… I had about eight whiskey sours at this point - (Cliff whistles) - shut up! Anyway, I don’t know how late it was but I was falling asleep and then I...shit, please don’t laugh?”

“I’ll try.”

“I thought McQueen was on the roof mocking me! Mocking me for h-having the career I wanted, taking roles from me! He even threatened to take you from me!”

“He’s got Bud, though.”

“I know! That’s what I told him! A-and he kept m-mocking me so I m-must have gotten the ladder over there and climbed up somehow and I got to the top and I… look, I-I didn’t realize until the morning that the antenna was him I was seeing, alright?”

“You thought the antenna was McQueen?”

Rick was too embarrassed to say yes, but even more annoyed when Cliff started howling with laughter. “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

“Said ‘I’ll try’ but shit man, even you gotta laugh at that.”

Rick thought about it. Yeah, it was kinda funny, he guessed. Would be more funny if it happened to someone else, though. “I-I guess so.”

Cliff finally calmed down before getting to an unusual serious tone from him. “But in all seriousness, you could have broken your neck. And as your stuntman, I’d advise you from any drunken nighttime climbs in the future, alright?”

Rick turned a bit red as he looked down at his feet. ‘Yeah. W-why don’t you take the ladder home with you, so I don’t try again then?”

“Yeah, been meaning to ask you, where is the ladder? I didn’t see it when I went to repair the antenna.” 

“Oh, um, around the side of the house. Behind the bushes.”

“Well, I’ll go take care of that right now.” Cliff gets up and goes to give Rick a hug, letting him know it’s alright and a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“Oh, shut up.” Rick playfully pushes him off as he watches Cliff head towards the door when something occurred to him. “H-hey, Cliff?”

“Hmm?”

“If you couldn’t find the ladder, how the hell did you get on the roof?”

Cliff just gives him that wolfish grin and a wink as a reply before slipping outside.

Rick flops down on the couch, shaking his head. These were the moments where Rick was relieved the kind of person like Cliff was on his side as he’d hate to know what it’s like to be Cliff’s enemy.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where I first read it but someone threw out the theory Rick got on the roof and fought the antenna while drunk and honestly, that's still my favorite theory, lol.


End file.
